I’m deep in pre-production and experimentation for upcoming projects, so have been distracted from the blog. But the things I’m working on will lead to material I’m looking forward to sharing here — both the final results and the creation process.
Along those lines, I recently came across several interesting ideas regarding the creation of ideas from Steven Johnson, author of the book “Chance Favors the Connected Mind” (via Ted Hope). Steven lays out his premise in this particularly thoughtful TED talk below, and I think he’s onto something.
First, ideas are not clearly defined, self-contained units. Rather they’re stringy nebulous networks with lots of branches connecting to other ideas and assorted assumptions and underlying facts and impulses. Furthermore, ideas do not tend to happen, as is typically characterized, in a single moment of inspired breakthrough, but rather gradually as hunches evolve and mingle with the hunches of others. They fade into view rather than pop into existence, generally by examining and comparing the hunch with the contributions of others — either through direct dialogue or through research of pre-existing work.
And therefore, the best environment for generating new ideas is one in which we can mix and compare our ideas rather than cultivate them in isolation. This explains why so many of the leading writers and thinkers and artists and scientists have come out of well defined creative clusters.
